if you know anything about mastering, click here.

[shackrock]

alright, so people around my city have heard about my home studio....and i've been getting a lot of people recently. I've been fine wtih that, and mix em great, and everyone's happy....ha

so now - i've been getting people who've already recorded some stuff on thier own stuff (for example a 4track or something)....and they've been asking me if i can do any mastering....since i got a "recording ear"....but I never really thought anything of it - but i assume i DO have enough equipment to do it.

so these people want to give me a cd or tape of all thier mixed songs, and want me to make it sound better.... where do i start with something like this? So far in all my time doing recording i've just made it sound as good as possible - with n-track - manipulating each track's EQ's, volumes, etc....but how would i go about doing this with a fully mixed song (aka just 1 track?).

if anyone can refer me to where i can find more "newbie" info to this, or just give me some hints/tips on where to start, i'd appretiate it.

Thanks again everyone who can help.

[Sonic Misfit]

Mastering or just tweaking?

Serious mastering usually requires different gear than what you typically use for tracking. However, you can do some good things to help songs that were recorded on 4 tracks. I use Wavelab to fix up recording. It is good for removing some noise or boosting certain frequencies or boosting the gain.

I wouldn't call it mastering, but it does help with the sound and if all they want is a better sounding demo, then Wavelab is a good solution. IMHO

[fenix]

my fellow cincinnatian,

I'm going to give you advice that I don't really subscribe to or promote. With that said, search for t-racks on Morpheus. Consider it a demo and buy the new updated version from www.t-racks.com

This is a basic masteriing suite that is very simple to use on the computer. I'm gonna get some mp3's up on the net for samples in a couple days.

[Whoopysnorp]

Whoops. I clicked on the link, but I don't know anything about mastering.

[nave]

Originally posted by Whoopysnorp
Whoops. I clicked on the link, but I don't know anything about mastering.

Hey that's my line

[LongWaveStudio]

Basically, someone else already said this, but a mastering studio will have different gear to a regular recording studio.

best thing to do is to do it on a cut rate, and learn your way into helping making the tracks sound better. i personally think there is no better way to learn than to try for yourself.

[Whoopysnorp]

I remember some anecdote I heard somewhere about a guy's first encounter with professional mastering. He'd been into home recording for a while, so he was pretty familiar with what gear was out there. When he went to a pro mastering house for the first time, he was struck to find that they didn't have ONE piece of gear that he'd ever heard of before. There were familiar brand names, but all the gear was mysterious and expensive.

[atomictoyz]

Interesting quandry...You might try to see if a remix is possible. If they Still have the machine they did the 4 track on or whatever...If not just do some tweaking on you digital editing software. If they are only going to distribute on CD-R for friends or family, then going to a pro mastering facility is not a viable option. I use T-Racks, its simple and affordable for DIY folks. You can give them a disclaimer that your not mastering but just cleaning house or something. IF the material is really good, I would suggest re-recording the project and go form there.


Peace,
Dennis

[shackrock]

ok thanks.....

that's perfectly what i needed to hear. i'll let him know.

[shackrock]

T-racks is GREAT!!
i'm definately going to buy that....but can anyone direct me to a good "walkthrough" to each control on it? I was just playing around with it, and i got a TOTALLY different sound from my song - for the better! i can just imagine what i could do with it if i actually knew what each thing did!

[LongWaveStudio]

DONT get T-racks.

you're better off by a LONG way by getting something like Wavelab or Soundforge and some decent Waves Plugins. The compressors in that package are excellent, and the eq's are very nice. must better solution. also, t-racks does not let you tidy things up in the way something like soundforge or wavelab will.

[Uladine]

I know one thing about mastering for sure...

Its best left to the mastering gods who know what they're doing and have been doing it for years and years.

Now if people just want their final mixes to sound better, you can do what I do to mine, although I don't consider it mastered. I just call it "sweetened up a little bit ."

[LongWaveStudio]

i personally think mastering is left to the right people. BUT, if you want to do the best you can without buying all the expensive hardware then get one of the packages I addressed. T-Racks will get you nowhere, fast.

even if you're not truly mastering, you will start to understand the process a lot better if you try and attempt it. if you dont try, you will never learn.

[shackrock]

well alirght, but where can i find wavelab and for what price?
also - what are the differences that THAT lets you do?

all i'm really looking for is a somewhat simple way to make my final mix sound better. no - not master - but better. as good as my ears can get it.

[shackrock]

in additino.

when i mixdown my files from n-track...should i lower the master volume a bunch (aka by around 5-8 db) so that when i send it to t-racks - or whatever - for compression, there never was any instances of clipping? i mean, since i'm not using a plug-in in n-track to compress/limit now (i'd be using t-racks or something of that sort)?

[shackrock]

haha ok i see i see.

so where can i take a look at wavelab? (website?)

and once more:

"when i mixdown my files from n-track...should i lower the master volume a bunch (aka by around 5-8 db) so that when i send it to t-racks - or whatever - for compression, there never was any instances of clipping? i mean, since i'm not using a plug-in in n-track to compress/limit now (i'd be using t-racks or something of that sort)?"

thanks again guys!

[mikemoritz]

Yea, I agree with sonusman totally. T-racks is "baby's first mastering" tool. I am not a pro definitely, or even an amateur at mastering, but Wavelab 4 is looking schweet, and it seriously blows T-racks out of the water. Do yourself a favor. Get Wavelab. It's more than just "mastering" as well. You get a full blown editor (and it smokes with some RAM in your machine). So yea, I vote Wavelab 4 on this one.....it'll be worth the wait and money.

www.steinberg.net

Mike

[LongWaveStudio]

some company sent me the first version of T-Racks to review it and see if i wanted to use it in the studio. I played with it for about one hour and sent it back saying i didn't want anything to do with it.

it claims some analog warmth gets added. bull. you get a few valves which light up and change colour. the compressor was disgusting, the limiter had a horrible artifact , the only thing which was ok, was the eq. and that wasn't very comprehensive.

sonusman, true, wavelab is not good enough for "mastering", but im sure you'll agree with me in the fact that it is something that can always be upgraded and manipulated better than T-racks.

It's either wavelab, or I must admit, sound forge has worked quite well as well, the new version 5. the benefit of both packages is, you can edit onto the wave itself in a better way. ill give you a quick example...

yesterday, i had to make a radio edit for a client. so i put the track into Soundforge, found the points to be editied, zoomed into find the exact points of the beat, did a little crossfading, deleted the sections i didn't need. done. the track was edited, ready to be mastered. to do edits like that is so easy, and you cant do it with T-Racks.

Wavelab or Soundforge (sonic foundry) can be bought in most respected music shops, i guess. Maybe a little more expensive to T-Racks, but there are obvious reasons for that:-) i bought wavelab originally, just for the analysis features. so thats one good reason to buy it. you can check phase, frequency graphs, allsorts. im sure it will educate you in someway if you are new to mastering.


sonusman, which waves plug ins do you like? i must admit, i hate plugins, but ive been impressed with a couple of waves' stuff.

-Romesh

[Digital Reason]

Just my 2 cents on mastering.

I always thought that the main goals in mastering were as follows.

1...Sequence of songs (Start ID's and Index plotting)
2...Amount of space in-between each song
3...Fade to zero point at the beginning and end of each song to negate clicks and pops at the start / end of songs.
4...Over all level adjustments through compression (Each song at the same volume)
5...EQ adjustments and tweaks
6...Edits for radio spots, time issues, transfer blotch edits (Eg. Dropout on the master dat, section has to be cut due to stupid shit)
7...Transfer to professional digital medium (Beta SP, Exabyte, Sony 1630) this medium goes to the manufacturing plant where the glass master is made from said medium.

Besides the above, the mastering process has opened up in the last 30 so years, before mastering was just a technical process that transferred music from one medium to another, but when mastering engineers discovered that they could enhance the sound of records by recording at louder volumes which could sell more copies because of the increased quality, thus the mastering engineer was given some creative control.

The tweaks (Eq, Compression decisions etc.) are at the hands of the mastering engineer. This is why some engineers get hired for some projects and others don’t. Each has his / her own individual sound. If I am not mistaken, in North America Mastering is looked upon as a process where your music gets tweaked and EQ'd to sound better before it goes to dupp. In Europe however the mastering process is still looked upon as the first step in the duplication process, still very mechanical and not allot of room for tweaking. I would believe that is why many Euro artists get their material mastered in North America. Mastering now is GRAND due to 5.1 systems, whoever has the 5.1 mastering suite has the business for who ever needs a 5.1 format mastered.

I could be wrong but I don’t think that I am too much off the mark
(Looks like my 2 cents turned into $2.20)

Jeff
Saunavation Audio Productions

[zip]

Although I'm not a "pro" I do agree with Ed and LWS...

The "mastering in a box" tools are not the way to go..

When I "master" tracks I use LAP V5 and insert some quality plugins into the master bus before I bounce. (actually I import the mix as a separate file to do so...) I like some of the Sonic Timeworks stuff as well as the Waves plugins. A few of the native Logic plugins work nicely as well.

That being said - the Waves route MAY be cheaper because by the time you add up the cost of LAP V5 and all the plugs you are into some money. What I do like about my approach is I can track - mix - edit and "master" all in the same environment.

Avoid the quick fix and be happy (er)...

zip >>

[LongWaveStudio]

the only advice i would add onto zip's post is that..

if you are going to record, mix and master in a sequencer programme, make sure you make a version without all the mastering aswell. you may think those meters look really cool at zero today, but come back tomorrow and you'll probably think it sucked. if you dont have an unmastered version, you'll have to remix the whole track!

ALWAYS HAVE AN UNMASTERED VERSION. even if you say, right, im gonna put this compressor very lightly on the whole mix, make a mix without it aswell. if you get into the habit, you'll be happy in the long run.

[zip]

That's exactly what I do...

Track - mix - SAVE

IMPORT - "master" - SAVE

Good advice!

zip >>

[fenix]

Originally posted by sonusman
shakrock, DON'T waste your money on T-Racks!!! I am a professional mixing/mastering engineer who uses Wavelab and Waves plugin's in my work (and consider IT to be barely adequate for the job....). So now that makes TWO professional engineers, both who have/currently own their own studios (LongWaveStudio's is quite a bit bigger than mine was...) who recommend that you don't waste your money on it. We have both seen/heard too many people blow $300 on that piece of shit software.

Just consider this. You can spend that $300 for T-Racks now, and you will realize we were right a little ways down the road, then that is WASTED money because T-Racks certainly isn't going to give you your money back when you discover it sucks.

OR

You can spend a bit more money right off the bat for Wavelab 4 (my famous saying around here is "Buy cheap, buy twice!"), which contains plugins natively that are at least as good as T-Racks, and in addition allow you to migrate in OTHER plugin's as you can afford them. It will also allows you to do direct editing to the .wav file. As well, Wavelab has very good CD authoring software native to it. It is by and far a much better "mastering" solution, even for your simple needs. Trust me on this one. I have nothing gain by recommending it to you except the gain of knowing I steered somebody away from a decision, solely based upon finances, that they will regret later. I KNOW you will regret your T-Racks purchase later as your ears become better at hearing the bad artifacts it inflicts upon the sound. Yes, you are all "gee whiz" right now, but you have NO basis of comparison, and I DO!!! So does LongWaveStudio.

You can't argue with TWO professional engineers arguements that Wavelab would be a better "bang for the buck" can you? If you do, well, I guess you didn't need to post this question in the first place eh?

Good luck.

Ed

Settle down beavis,
you gotta realize our friend shackrock is just trying to master 4-track mixes, not 32 tracks on a 250,000 dollar sony reel to reel digital tape machine. On a four track analog tape, it is not going to make that much of a difference if you are using tracks or wavelab or taking it to a professional mastering studio. You can only polish turds (4-track tapes) so much.

[LongWaveStudio]

fenix,

a 4 track was just an example. he does say he'd work from CD-R aswell.

you might as well get the best anyway. why buy t-racks and later on realise you need something else.

where's the logic in that fenix?

wavelab is upgradable via it's plug-ins which can be used in a variety of ways.

-Romesh

[shackrock]

with MY recordings, i'll be working with maybe 10 tracks average per song....basically its:

1 drums
2-4 guitar
1 bass
2-4 vocal
sometimes 1 keyboard/other instrument

and each of those are recorded seperate (through beheringer mixer...802A (yes i know..we all hate behringer..lol).....and then to my comp, with n-track).

So i'd be "mastering" those, as well as maybe other homerecorder's tracks (some done with 4tracks, some like me, etc.).

Are there any plugins that i could just use with n-track? like decent EQ/Compressor/Limiter plugins?